I was summoned into someone else's game through my soap stone thing. He also summoned someone else, so there were three of us. We were just cruising, killing some dudes and then we got invaded. The three of us together didn't have too much trouble killing the invader. When he died I got over 170,000 souls, which seems ridiculous. I gained about 40 levels. Is this a normal amount of souls to get from an invader? What is the number of souls received based off of?

I recorded it:

No. That is not normal. He must have had been very high level, and had a high amount on him.

Man, there's something so great about seeing a super high level character invade the wrong world and just get totally destroyed. I'm not sure if they actually lose any of their souls, though.

Sounds more like some fishy hacking thing. In over 200 hours of play, I've not come across such a thing. Not even close.

I often have >150K souls on me in PVP because at this point it takes 300K to level up. I've definitely gotten some kills worth >150K too. It's not common but it's not that rare.

Probably. It is PC. Not sure how it works for summoned help. The Host gets 50% of the level up cost of the invader. So maybe everyone you have summoned does also. So that means to get 170,000 means he had to have been 260-265(?) level. So probably hacked or glitched that early in PC I would assume.

The most I have ever gotten for killing an invader was around 40K.

That's pretty insane.

I've got to say, I really liked how the game looks, especially the lighting, are you playing on highest graphics settings?

I haven't gotten the game yet, but I'm interested in playing as a magic based character. Would you recommend it and can you give some tips about starting a magic based char?

Hmm, I had this happen to me the other day as well. I wouldn't want to say for sure I think I may have ended up with the same amount of souls...

Same situation (three against one) although I was in Forest of Giants. The guy we fought did seem to be a pretty high level (I wasn't counting but he must have had ~2500 hit points). But your guy doesn't look like he was that high level - you took him out pretty quickly!

Also can anyone confirm - I was under the impression that you no longer got the souls an invader was carrying when you defeated them!

I don't have a recording, and at the time it happened to me I just assumed I had been wrong about the souls received from invaders thing, so I didn't make much of a note of it, I just pumped the souls into my character and moved on. But my final total was definitely in the area of what yours ended up being, so I'm leaning towards this being a glitch.

No shit? Actually my hightest level dude would net a would-be killer around that amount of souls then. It might be legit then.

I've only gotten around 3000 or so, nothing close to what you received. I wish the online was more stable though.

Some pvp matches for me are great, they run smooth and are fair. Some on the other hand are completely bogus like when I clearly roll out of the way of an attack and still get hit. Top that with a few cases of me hitting an enemy (cueing a sound effect) and no damage registering and of course having people warp from your front to your back and you're gonna have a bad time. While I completely prefer the PvE stuff, I do enjoy the occasional multiplayer fight, just wish it was done better

I wouldn't immediately jump to conclusions and assume he's hacking because hes a high level. Having bought the PS3 version when it came out, and getting the platinum in it, when the PC version came out I knew exactly what I was doing and was able to pretty much fly through the game, S-Ranking it as well. I wouldn't necessarily assume foul play unless he had infinite health or something crazy.

This may be a cheater's way of trying to ruin the experience of anyone who defeats them. I believe it will affect your soul memory making it far more difficult to invade/get invaded by and summon other players around your level (even if you don't spend them). Of course, if you do spend the souls, you are arguably ruining the sense of level progression. Unless you don't care about having a more true level progression or the pvp/summon side of DS2, it could be pretty annoying running into these people. I could be wrong about all this though.

PC has been pretty bad when it comes to hacked characters. As a Bellbro, I get 10% of the souls required for the host to level when I kill them. I've received as much as 50k souls for doing so, when my character's soul memory is less than 700K (I was sl 70 at the time, if memory serves). So yeah, there are a fair number of people running around at super high level, but impossibly low soul memory. Hilariously they've all been fat-rolling and not very good.

Something slightly depressing about seeing a full mage build fight.

Probably. I finished my first playthrough on PC, got into NG+ and I was invaded a bunch of times by hackers at that point. I also recorded that, haven't uploaded the video yet. But basically, they don't take any damage at all. Cheap as hell. If that stuff continues I'm going to say consoles are the place to be again.

Funny, I had the same thing happen. Got about 180,000 from killing one guy. He was pretty tough, so probably high level, but still. The bad part (as far as I can speculate) is that after I leveled with all of those souls, it was then much harder to be summoned into the earlier bosses, probably because of the soul level restriction, and most of the people fighting those bosses now being much lower level than me, despite us being in the same part of the game.

Very similar thing happened to me recently in the same area. I just assume they were hacking in some fashion (mostly because back stabs were doing like 200 a pop).

I am playing with the highest graphics settings.

I don't know how comfortable I would be giving tips since I barely know enough about the game to get by. I've already made a number of leveling mistakes and buying spells I'll never use. I used the preorder staff for the longest time. It requires a bit of intelligence and faith. I then bought a bunch of miracles when I met the miracle lady. Ten minutes later I met the hexer guy and bought a bunch of hexes and stopped using miracles altogether. I'm still kind of shooting from the hip with everything I do.

Definitely not the most efficient way of doing things. :)

Nope and it's called PC gaming.

The article Patrick linked to about cheating was a real eye-opener to me, as for some reason, I had never expected that people would actually pay to be able to cheat. I just thought the people cheating where actual hackers with the skills to do so themselves. As such logically there shouldn't be that many, since it would actually require you to work for the skills necessary to do so. In hindsight it is not really surprising, but online gaming on PC suddenly seems a lot more daunting.

I was invading through the Bell Keeper Covenant to get hidden weapon for a few hours yesterday, and ended up with a lot more souls than I would have expected, I think I know why now.

Yeah, and 170,000 souls really isn't much at all if you're just fooling around in your first playthrough completing things before moving to NG+. My only confusion is, assuming this works like Dark Souls 1, that this person was able to invade you at all. In DS1 you could only invade hosts that were 10% under your level or infinitely higher than your level. I see some people here mentioning he might have had 'x' number of souls on him; is that a factor in this game? In DS1 I'm pretty sure it just was like 1/2 the amount of souls it would have taken the invader to level.

Anyways, at like level 300 it starts taking roughly 300,000 to level, so if the souls you get is determined the same way it was in DS1 then this guy was indeed super high-leveled, and him being able to connect to you would make me think he was cheating in some way. I guess he could have been exploiting the soul memory system in some way. I'm still real unsure how all that factors in, aside from NG+(+)ers getting grouped together.

I'm not sure how it all works, but I'm pretty sure it is a combination of your soul level and soul memory. I'm not sure if we have any developers on record laying out the exact process, but I haven't really researched it all that hard either.

And are we sure that the souls you get from invasions/invaders are linked to the souls it would take you to level? I had always just assumed that the winner got the amount of souls the other person was currently carrying.

@bushpusherr: I really can't imagine that's the case, but I don't know for sure. It would be so easy to cheese it and just have a friend pop a bunch of souls and invade your game for an easy kill and a ton of souls. I've personally invaded a ton, and you don't lose your souls permanently if you die while invading, you just gotta pick up your bloodstain. That doesn't discount that your currently-held souls are given to the people who kill you, but it makes me think it's not the case.

As for DS1... I did a lot of PVP in DS1, so I can say pretty confidently that you get some kind of percentage of the souls it takes your opponent to level up. PVP at low levels nets you a consistent couple thousand souls, while PVP at 150+ will net you a consistent ~100,000 souls, for example. Those aren't exact numbers; just off-the-cuff examples.

@bushpusherr: No, there is no matchmaking done with Soul Level. Only Soul Memory and it is within 25% of the other player. For example, if you have Soul Memory of 100.000, then you can invade or be invaded by people with Soul Memory of 75.000 - 125.000.

So yes, this person was most likely cheating. You usually don't have around 170.000 Soul Memory when you hit Heide's Tower of Flame.

Here's a chart that lists how much souls you'll get from PvPing.

170k puts your invader around SL 420+. Obviously hacked, otherwise his SM would have not allowed him to invade you.

I've killed 2 max level invaders before, each giving me 450-500k worth of souls. Great for leveling, but it really did a number on my SM.

A friend of mine got over 500 k taking out an invader together with two sunbros on the way to nashandra. Then he rolled off the platform in the fight. He went back and feather back to the bonfire.

All sounds like hacked save files to me.

You really don't need much to hack/cheat in DS2, it's an open and insecure system where all the variables are in plain view to find. All you would have to do is adjust your soul memory number. Easy-peasy. A child could do it.

Dark Souls 2 PC - the superior single player experience.

@dudeglove: I was never summoned for anything. The only time I can think of you getting summoned to someone elses world is when laying down a red soul sign around the Mirror Knight boss gate in NG+ for a chance to get summoned into the boss fight as a "mirror apparition" or whatever - something that is incredibly annoying when trying to keep Bernhardt alive.

Also I was mostly referring to the fact that the online seems shitty on PC because so many people hack. On consoles it's at least a little harder. I mean I spend enough time wondering what is going on when I can clearly see the flame effect and flame noise of hitting an invader with my sword yet they take no damage. Or how come my sword keeps hitting air when I know it had the reach to hit - all lag, but at least it's only lag and not hacking as well.

@dudeglove:

I think you can be summoned there. I was pulled into a world - something about being summoned as a grey spirit. It's totally worth it though - there isn't a penalty if you die, and if you win you get a Pharros Lockstone.

It seems to be the opposite of the Bell place.

You stepped into Ratbro territory. It's a pretty great setup for people (invaders) who are forcefully pulled into the host world (covenant member) because since they lose nothing if they are killed.

I've killed 2-3 mules on PS3 that yielded something like 400k-500k souls. I've yet to get a large amount pvping on the PC version, though.